


All My Shotgun Smiles

by Silent-Wordsmith (Shatteredsand)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, EMT!Clarke, F/F, US Marine Captain!Lexa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-05-24 17:18:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6160816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatteredsand/pseuds/Silent-Wordsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war is over, and it's time for US Marine Captain Lexa Woods to learn that there's more to living than just surviving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> And another.

Clarke blinks blearily at her phone, hoping that the machine will read some kind of visual Morse code in the movements and _stop making noise_. Sadly, technology has not yet developed the sentience to interpret the groggy half-thoughts of their human owners and the phone continues to sound the alarm.

With a groan, Clarke reaches over and shuts the damn noise off, checking the time. Seven pm. Clarke continues staring for a while, wondering why on earth she’d set an alarm when she knows her next shift isn’t until tomorrow afternoon. The question is answered in the form of her phone blasting Jessie J’s “Do It Like a Dude”.

Octavia. Of course.

“Hey, O.” Clarke grumbles, stretching out until her back and shoulders pop.

“This is your wake-up call to make sure you don’t just keep hitting the snooze button on your alarm.” Clarke can faintly hear the hustle and bustle of Drop-Ship in the background. Octavia must already be on shift, or about to be shortly.

“Would I do that?” It’s a rhetorical question. Clarke has missed more than one social gathering because of her snooze button. At some point during college, time had become an abstract to Clarke. It had lost nearly all meaning all together once she’d graduated. Between work and art and trying to find the time to squeeze in her daily eight hours, Clarke had all but given up on being any kind of social without rigorous prodding and reminding.

It isn’t that she doesn’t want to see her friends, or even that she doesn’t want to get incredibly drunk at the end of a hard week. It’s that, sometimes, she honestly can’t seem to find a way to mesh it all within her hectic schedule.

“Yes. You have, in fact, done that before. Many times. Thus my call.” Clarke can practically hear Octavia rolling her eyes. “Come on, Princess, you _promised_ to come see me tonight.”

“Don’t call me that.” Clarke grouses, sitting up and wiping the sleep from her eyes, even though she knows it’s beyond useless. No matter what she said or did, the pet name clung to her like a nonlethal but particularly irritating lichen.

“I’ll call you things that will make a sailor blush if you stand me up again, Griffin.” Octavia huffs, and Clarke already knows where this is going. After knowing Octavia for years, she’s become well-versed in predicting all the tale-tell signs of the Bellamy has been acting stupid and over-protective and vaguely smothering and Octavia wants the whole world to know about it rant. “If you’re not there to distract Bell from glowering at literally everyone who so much as _smiles_ at me, I’m going to murder him with my tip jar. My _empty_ tip jar. He flashed his badge at a customer yesterday while doing his stupid ‘I’m the kind of cop who is constantly under AI investigation for excessive force’ face. Which, by the way, is both inaccurate and not even a little bit scary, so how come everyone is always running off when he does it?”

Clarke bites her tongue to stop herself from pointing out that Bellamy is tall and _built_ and has the kind of face that could lead nations and topple kings. There wouldn’t be a point, because Octavia already knows all of that and she doesn’t care; she just wants to bitch about her brother being an idiot for a hot second. Clarke can do that. Mostly because while Bellamy is actually one of the smartest people she knows, he’s right up there with her mechanical engineer of a best friend and her trauma surgeon mother in terms of intelligence, he is also, fundamentally, the dumbest kind of dumb when it comes to his baby sister.

“I’m up, I’m up right now. I’m getting in the shower and getting dressed and I will be at The Drop-Ship within two hours. Your tip jar is safe.” Clarke reassures, already mentally going through her closet and trying to decide what to wear.

“You’re the best, Princess!” Octavia cheered, hanging up before Clarke could tell her, again, to stop calling her that. Fucking Finn starting shit. Fucking friends parroting fucking Finn and never letting it go. Princess isn’t even a good nickname, or an accurate one. So her family had a bit of money, so her mother is the chief of staff for one of the best hospitals in the country, doesn’t make her a _princess_. It’s not like Clarke is sitting in a castle somewhere surrounded by servants and completely incapable of doing anything herself.

She’s a fucking EMT, one of the least princess-y jobs she can think of. She spends her days covered in sweat and blood and viscera, trying to hold together the dying. She’s _not_ a fucking princess.

Stupid fucking Finn.

Clarke breathes in and just holds it for a second. Her exhale is long and nosy and enough for her to let go of the irritation bubbling beneath her skin. It’s not like Finn and the others even mean anything by it; they know her, know what she does and how capable she is. It was just Finn being a jackass—he’s the sweetest, most of the time, but goddamn sometimes the boy just shouldn’t have words—and then Bellamy had gotten into the habit of flinging it at her whenever he was annoyed, and then when he _wasn’t_ annoyed, and now it’s some kind of affectionate nickname that Clarke actually despises but cannot get them to stop using.

Rolling her shoulders and reminding herself to relax, that she’s actually been looking forward to tonight, potential loss of sleep and all, and Clarke’s ready to get up, get ready, and have a damned good time.

OooO

Nine tenths of Lexa wishes she was elsewhere. In a store, distracted with purchasing some kind of semi-permanent furniture for her new semi-permanent residence. In said residence, sitting on the floor because she hasn’t found the time to buy much more than a mattress and bedframe yet, eating real, actual food instead of dehydrated-rehydrated MREs that have constituted the near entirety of her diet for almost a decade. In the wild forests of a warzone, again, doing the only thing she’s ever been any good at. _Not_ walking through streets crowded by civilians towards an off-base bar with Trikru Unit swarming around her with varying levels of enthusiasm.

But the majority vote inside her own head had somehow lost out to Lincoln’s exuberance and Indra’s passive acceptance and Nyko’s challenging quirk of brow and Gustus’—fucking Gustus, the _traitor_ —gently taunting teasing.

This is necessary, Lexa reminds herself. Trikru is her unit, these are her people. Lexa leads by example, by being part of the unit rather than a collection of brass and gold and silver badges barking orders down the chain of command.

Trikru Unit is happy to be home, to breathe air without wet dirt sticking to the backs of their throats and choking them, to sleep without worrying if the next time they wake will be the last time. Trikru is _celebrating_ , and they want their captain, their commander, to celebrate with them. Lexa will not do them the dishonor of refusing.

She lets her soldiers cajole her into attending. Even though she should be setting up her new living space as something more than empty rooms and a full fridge. Even though she doesn’t know how to explain to them—wouldn’t even if she could find the words—that she loves her country, would die for it, but it hasn’t felt like home to her in a long time; that this homecoming is not a celebration for her. Even though she can think of a hundred de facto regulations—if not any de jure ones—that say that she should leave them to their own devices without her watchful eye, that she is a member of the unit but also their superior, and she should let them have this night of jubilation without her.

But Trikru is _her_ unit, and these are _her_ people, and they are the closest thing to family she’s felt since she was fifteen. If they want her to celebrate their homecoming with them, then by the gods, she’s going to. She is a leader, _their_ leader, and she will not falter now just because the terrain is better known and the danger less present. These soldiers are _hers_ , in a way nothing else ever has or ever will be again, and she’ll look after them in all things. Even the things that don’t fall under the purview of her captaincy. Even the things that don’t, necessarily, require looking after.

Lexa refuses to contemplate why taking a bullet for them seemed so much easier than sharing a drink with them.

“Relax, _Heda_.” Gustus  smirks from his place at her right. The informal and possibly affectionate title falling off his lips sounds almost wrong with the backdrop of rushing traffic and bustling crowds behind it instead of whistling winds and the clanking of a dozen soldiers gearing up. Heda feels like something that belongs to the forest, when she’s snarling orders and they are obeying her without a second’s thought because she’s never ever been wrong and they _trust_ her. She doesn’t know that it belongs here, where the only order she’s the right to give is that none of them make any attempt at driving this night.

“I am relaxed.” This is, technically, true. Lexa is as relaxed as she gets. Which is, admittedly, not the same thing as _actually_ being relaxed, but it’s the best she can do so Gustus will just have to deal.

“A little black grease-paint around the eyes and you could be right back at base camp, ready to lead another charge.”

“I was relaxed then as well.”  Lexa shrugs carelessly because it’s true. She has never once been nervous about leading her crew on a mission. She has unwavering faith in their abilities, both to get the job done and to not die on her in the process. Lexa reserves the excess tension in her spine for war room meetings where she has only just begun to earn the right to speak and for the days preceding a mission, where she must weigh and measure every option to ensure that her strategy is the best. By the time it actually comes to seeing the plan put into action, Lexa finds herself calm once more.

This is, she thinks, _trust_. But she isn’t sure and she knows it would be foolish to ask.

“You’re not a machine, Cap.” Gustus continues, shaking his head a little. “You’re, what, twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

“That information is classified.” Lexa huffs, even though it isn’t and they both know it. Her age had featured heavily during the speech in her honor when she’d made Captain. With a mere four years of service to her name, Lexa had become one of the youngest captains in Marine history, and all of her superiors had been keen to stress the fact that she was only twenty-two. Gustus is a smart man, he is more than capable of adding the five years he’s spent under her captaincy to that number to reach her age.

“My point is that you’re a _damned_ good soldier, Captain, and the best officer I have ever had the honor of serving under. But you’re still young. You got time to be _more_ than just a soldier. Otherwise what the fuck were we fighting for?”

Lexa feels some foreign emotion crawling up the back of her throat and swallows it down thickly. Gustus is a good man, and Lexa has never been anything but proud to claim him as her second-in-command, but impassioned speeches weren’t his usual style and she finds herself unprepared for the swell of emotion left in its wake.

“Shof op, Gustus.” Lexa commands, and her voice is nothing but bitter iron. He smiles though, like he knows that beneath the steel of her words is something so much softer.

“Sha, Heda.” He snaps off a salute so sloppy Lexa actually cringes, but he also obeys. The walk to the bar is filled with her comrades’ talk amongst themselves and a few overexcited cheers from the youngest of the Trikru, but Gustus does not speak again. He stands, as ever, silent and watchful at her right hand.

Yes. Gustus is, indeed, a very good man and very good soldier, and Lexa would want no other as her second.

Perhaps tonight will not be so bad. A few drinks, watching the men and women she leads reveling in their homecoming, in their hard-won _peace_. Lexa has survived a war, she can survive watching her troops become slow and dumb with an excess of drink.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng Translations, in order of appearance:
> 
> "Heda": Commander  
> "Shof op, Gustus.": Shut up, Gustus  
> "Sha, Heda.": Yes, Commander


	2. Chapter 2

 

Ton DC is not a particularly crowded bar, Lexa notes with relief—she’s kept the sole company of Trikru for far too long to feel completely comfortable around noncombatants—and there’s plenty of room for the unit to troop in and commandeer sufficient table space.

Gustus slots seamlessly into the chair to Lexa’s right, the rightful place of her second-in-command. Indra settles to her left, looking bored and mildly scornful of the whole situation—though Lexa knows her Lieutenant well enough to see the tale-tell signs of genuine enjoyment buried under her stoic mask of distain. The others file into place—as if they’re still in the woods—a neat and orderly line-up of soldiers falling into rank, even without uniforms to distinguish them.

Lexa isn’t sure if she’s proud of their dedication to the proper order of things or concerned at how unconscious the action had seemed. Lexa is immensely proud of her unit and their accomplishments in the field, but she doesn’t want to see her soldiers turn into mindless machines of military precision.

When Lexa had had her pick of soldiers, the near unheard of honor of creating her own unit rather than simply being assigned command to a preassembled unit, she had only selected the best. Those who had shown initiative within their old units, an understanding for tactics and strategy. Those who followed orders until it became clear that those orders were _flawed_. Soldiers who had countermanded their previous superiors and had only managed to avoid a messy court-martial and dishonorable discharge because they had been _right_. Trikru was born from men and women too smart to follow stupid orders, too stubborn to be shamed for it, and too damned troublesome to have been considered perfect soldiers by those that outranked them.

Lexa desperately doesn’t want to lose that, doesn’t want _them_ to lose that. Trikru are so much more than dogs trained to obey. Lexa would rather give up her right arm, here and now, than see her unit become just another cluster of jarheads, too trained to think for themselves.

“My idea, so the first round’s on me.” Lincoln states. He starts to stand, eyes flickering towards the bar, and then he goes still. Not tense, they’ve been soldiers together too long for any of them to not know what battle readiness looks like on each other, just _still_. With a unison that is both achingly familiarly and horribly startling in this place, Trikru Unit redirect their gazes to the bar and that which has caught their brother’s attention so completely that the poor man has forgotten to do so much as breathe.

It takes Lexa little time to realize that Lincoln, the idiot, has become captivated by the young woman behind the bar. She can see the appeal, really. The bartender _is_ really rather gorgeous. Long brown hair pulled back out of her way with a series of braids not dissimilar to those employed by those in Trikru with hair long enough to do so. A jawline sharp enough to cut steel. All the right curves in all the right places, highlighted by the skin-tight, low-rise jeans clinging to her hips and the equally skin-tight clinginess of her top. She’s laughing at something another patron, a man that Lexa understands would be considered attractive to those so inclined, and it is lovely.

“Reaper.” Lexa barks, and it feels like coming home, slipping back into command, in a way that actually coming home hadn’t. Lincoln snaps to attention, and the rest of Trikru all straighten their spines as well— _Captain on the floor_.

“Sha, Heda.”

“The drinks.” Lexa allows herself a small smile. “Stay on mission, soldier.”

All at once, her soldiers relax into their seats again, smiling and snickering.

“Requests?”

“ _Alcoholic_ , Reaper. Gon yu we.” Indra says, dry and almost cutting, and there is a general bout of head nodding agreement. It’s been a long war and Trikru is thirsty; they don’t much care what the fuck it’s called so long as it does the job.

Lincoln heads to the bar, steps quick and sure and at ease. Lexa wonders how he does that, how they all do that, fall back out of all the ingrained habits of military life with barely a thought. Lexa can’t seem to even remember that she has a setting that isn’t Captain-Commander-Marine- _Soldier_ , let alone how to fall into it again.

Lexa shakes the thought from her head. She’s supposed to be celebrating right now or, at the very least, making sure none of her unit is stupid enough to do something foolish while _they_ celebrate. She doesn’t have time to brood. Her people come first.

She mentally calculates the average time it would take to prepare two pitchers of house draft, factors in the establishment’s current number of patrons and adds a small amount of minutes in which Lincoln might have been made to wait before placing the order. Her eyes dart to the bar again, because she thinks Lincoln has been gone just a little too long. Not enough to be a cause for concern, not yet—this isn’t the war, Lexa forces herself to remember, Lincoln isn’t at risk of not coming back—but Lexa is far too accustomed to knowing where her people are and when they should be there to disregard the discrepancy.

Lincoln is standing at the bar, a pitcher in one hand and several cups in the other, a smile tugging at his lips as he converses with the bartender. Ah. Before Lexa can decide whether to summon him or let him have his fun, Gustus makes a decision of his own.

The sharpness of his whistle demands attention, though only Lincoln is trained to respond to it and so the rest of the bar’s customers seem content to ignore it, and then Gustus is gesturing with his head towards the table. Lincoln nods once, turns to speak a few final words to the pretty girl, and then heads back over with the beer.

“Took your time, Ripa.” Tristian smirks and the way Lincoln rolls his eyes in response feels vaguely familiar, like the way the foster kids who had been placed together for a long time had interacted with each other. “Get distracted?”

“Shof op.” Lincoln takes his place at their tables again, and the Trikru waste no time divvying it up. The girl from behind the counter rolls up to the table around then, another pitcher in hand. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing.” Her smile seems wild in a way Lexa cannot accurately describe. The girl’s hand brushes Lincoln’s shoulder as she passes to return to her position and half the Trikru are clearly ramping up to tease him mercilessly.

“Ai sonraun laik yu sonraun, en oso gonpley nou ste oden nowe!” Lexa toasts, before the unit has the chance to devolve into juvenile jeering. She isn’t very good at people, on a personal basis, but she is very good at leading and she knows that a few good words here will further unite the unit and raise their spirits. These are the things Lexa is good at, so these are the things Lexa does.

“Oso gonpley ste oden nowe!” Trikru cheers back, raising their glasses.

OooO

Clarke is only a little late by the time she’s fully ready to go out. In her defense, the extra-long shower she took was for the betterment of any and every one she has to have contact with tonight. Nobody wants to smell sweat and antiseptic with the cloying scent of blood clinging beneath it all night long. Clarke, especially, doesn’t.  

But now, she’s ready and she hasn’t heard any even vaguely ominous sounds coming from the living room where Raven’s waiting for her, so everything will probably be intact the next time she needs to use them.

Raven, as usual, manages to look spectacular in a way that screams to the world that she doesn’t give fuck about looking spectacular. Minimal make-up, faded black skinny jeans, white tank-top, and a brilliantly red leather jacket. Hair thrown up in a sloppy pony. Clarke sighs at the pointless self-inflicted pain of having friends who are all ridiculously attractive all the time.

Clarke knows she’s no slouch in the looks department—it’s not a matter of ego, it just _is_ —but, seriously, sometimes the struggle is _so real_. Because Clarke is not now nor has she ever in love with any of her friends—that thing with Bellamy emphatically _does not count_ —but the temptation, sometimes...times like these, when maybe it’s been a bit of a while, when Clarke can’t help but think “what’s a one-night stand between friends, really?”

She wouldn’t, of course, no matter how drunk or how long and dry the spell has been. But, god, sometimes she thinks about it.

“Come on, Griffin, stop thinking about the totally fantastic sex we could be having if I was a little gayer or a lot drunker, and let’s go!”

Clarke feels the blush blossoming in her cheeks and curses herself, for the thousandth time, for ever letting that little tidbit of information slip.

“The ego.” Clarke rolls her eyes because it’s easy. “Everyone knows that straight girls mean bad sex, Rae.”

“We both know that I’ve never been bad at _anything_.” Raven cocks an arrogant eyebrow and her voice is haughty.

“Then why were there so many explosions in our apartment in college?”

“Because I _like_ explosions.” Raven says, standing up and stretching out, “Now let’s go. Bell’s probably scared off half a dozen good tippers by now, and if Octavia is finally going to kill her brother, I wanna see it live and in person.”

“You are a sick, sick human being, Raven Reyes.”

“You love it, Princess.”

“Kinda.”

Raven grins and throws an arm over Clarke’s shoulders. “Let’s go get drunk!”

OooO

The eventual devolution happens, of course. Too much beer and the thrumming excitement of victory, of celebration. Trikru breaks into subunits, talking among themselves, or branching out to flirt with the other people in the bar. Lincoln has found his way back to the bar and appears to be conversing with the bartender again while the dark-haired man from before, the one who had made her laugh, glowers. Lexa hopes the man isn’t going to do something drastic; she isn’t in the mood to finishing any kind of bar brawl such a confrontation would cause.

“Chilla, Heda.” Gustus says, and the flawless enunciation of the half-official-but-mostly-not code is how Lexa knows that he’s been nursing his drink just as much as she has.

“You first.” Lexa nods towards his half-full cup. “Not enough to go around, Gustus?”

Gustus does not appear to be willing to play along. “Nou get yu daun, Heda. I stand the watch.”

“I am _not_ retiring.” Lexa is far too use used to masking her emotions to allow the creeping sense of horror the idea inspires in her to make an appearance on her face, but she cannot deny that she feels it. She suspects she will be an old dog in the marines until such a time as she is rendered unfit for duty or they put her body in the ground, and she holds close the sick hope that it will be the latter before the former. “I don’t even qualify for retirement yet, which you know, _Lieutenant_.”

“I meant the literal watch, Lexa. Drink, flirt, go home with someone and regret it in the morning. I’ll make sure Trikru makes it back in one piece.”

Even Lexa’s control is not steeled enough to stop her eyebrow from rising. “Gustus, are you advocating that I ‘get laid’? That is deeply inappropriate.”

“Heda. Please.” Gustus rolls his eyes—Lexa doesn’t think she’s ever seen such an expression on his face and it is _ridiculous_ —and pours the remainder of his beer into her cup. “If you do not get at _least_ tipsy tonight and talk to at least one attractive woman who is not Trikru, I will coerce Nyko into notifying your commanding officer that you have fallen seriously ill and are not to report for duty for any period of time within the next two weeks.”

 Lexa narrows her eyes. “Are you trying to _blackmail_ me into having a good time?”

“Yes.” Gustus is solemn and unyielding under the weight of her gaze, unapologetic and unsettling in his sincerity. “It is my solemn duty as your right hand to make you enjoy yourself. Just this once, Heda, make my job easy?”

“Your job is to keep me alive. And to keep them alive.” Lexa gestures with her head to the spread out members of Trikru. “Do your job.”

With that, Lexa tips the cup back and finishes the drink before standing up and heading to the bar.

OooO

Walking into Ton DC, Clarke knows immediately that Octavia has wrest control of the night’s music selection. Mostly because Clarke knows that the bar generally plays the usual mix of billboard’s top forty at slightly lower volumes and that is emphatically not what is happening right now. Octavia’s tastes run a bit more…angry and violent. Heavy bass and angry guitar riffs and the steady pounding of drums like a pulse beneath the song. It’s a little louder than normal, as well, but that’s Octavia in a nutshell really. Louder than usual, and not a damn bit sorry about it.

Clarke is about to make a comment about this, something that will make Raven laugh, when she’s horribly distracted by the devastatingly gorgeous woman sitting at the end on the bar. Her spine is ramrod straight, fingers curled loosely around a glass of amber, brown hair held back with intricate braids hanging over her shoulders with a sort of controlled chaos. But the thing that catches Clarke, that swallows her words and drowns her thoughts, is her eyes. Sharp and focused, watching everything around her.

She sits on the bar stool like a throne, coldly detached from the room, weighing and measuring the room’s occupants. It’s enthralling.

“They’re back, bitches!” Octavia crows, bringing Clarke back to herself. Most of the patrons of Ton DC, college kids like Octavia—some a little less legal than others—don’t pay them any attention, either used to Octavia’s antics or too concerned with blotting out everything that had happened in the past week and everything that will happen in the weeks soon to come. Clarke remembers that feeling, almost misses it. Turns out the stress of rapidly approaching final exams and harsh professors aren’t quite as stressful as running around trying to hold people together long enough for a hospital to put them back together. Who knew?

The man Octavia had been talking to before she’d seen them—bravely ignoring Bellamy’s bad-cop glare—looks up and smiles politely before seeming to focus on his drink, apparently content with losing Octavia’s attention. Good man, in Clarke’s opinion. He might actually be the first guy to realize that Octavia is captivating and flirty, but her interest in them, while not necessarily feigned, is part of her _job_. “Flirty” O gets more tips than “looks like she could kill a man with her eyes” O.

“Octavia, I have been in this bar for longer than thirty seconds, and yet my hands are empty. Why hath thou forsaken me?” Raven cries theatrically, throwing herself half over the bar and half over Bellamy and making grab-hands towards Octavia.

Clarke is pretty damn sure that just putting a whole bottle of vodka into a customer’s hands is against policy, or maybe the law, but that in no way prevents Octavia from doing it. Clarke rolls her eyes affectionately and sits down at the bar, in an actual stool like a civilized human being. Octavia, having released the vodka, begins to pour Clarke’s favorite drink with a smile.

“Look who finally crawled out from beneath the sheets.”

“I heard your tip jar was in dire danger. I felt compelled to uphold my oath and save it.”

“Raven looks to have distracting Bell down, what with her _slutting it up in his lap._ ” A pause here, long enough for Raven to casually give Octavia the bird while drinking straight from the recently given bottle and Bellamy to pointedly look between his hands—positioned to keep Raven from falling flat on the bar and slithering down to the floor and in one hundred present appropriate places—and back to his sister. “But that just means that you and I can have a conversation that doesn’t always circle back around to the damn Romans or fucking science.”

“Rude!” Raven is trying to glare, but the smile on her face kind of ruins the effect. “ _Griffin_ is the one who sluts it up with your brother. _I’m_ a practically a married woman.”

“I don’t _just_ talk about the Romans.” Bellamy argues playfully.

Octavia turns to the man she’d been speaking to before, “Lies. Bell likes to think he can talk about all kinds of history, but we always, always, end up back at Romans. And Raven is only ever ‘practically married’ when Finn is around.”

The man laughs, and, oh yeah, Clarke can tell that the man is already a goner. The Blake charm has claimed another victim this night. She makes a mental note to get Bellamy out of the bar before closing so Octavia doesn’t have to worry about having her brother cock-block her. Because Clarke is a good friend like that.

“The Greeks and Romans laid the foundation of literally everything. Of course, it goes back to them!” Bellamy laments, shaking his head his sister’s antics.

Clarke decides that discretion is the better part of valor, and calmly lifts her drink to her lips while the siblings bicker.

Raven, in a move that Clarke can’t quite describe as helpful, pours vodka into the glass, ensuring that her white Russian is a bit more Russian than Clarke thinks is really necessary for the first drink of the night. Her shift tomorrow might not start until four in the afternoon, but she would really rather not risk being hungover for it. She doesn’t have the kind of job where a day of lackluster performance would be anything less than disastrous. People could _die_.

“Rae.” Clarke says pointedly, because she’s here to hang out with her friends and have a good time, not get blackout drunk before midnight.

“I’m _helping_!”

“Hi there,” Octavia cuts Bellamy off in the middle of a sentence Clarke isn’t really listening to. “As the actual, certified bartender here, you are not helping. That bottle is a sacred trust, Reyes. Don’t abuse it.”

Raven pouts for a second, then. “Fine, fine. I’ll behave. For now.”

This is as much as any of them can hope for, really.

“So long as nothing blows up.” Clarke sighs, more of a prayer than anything else, and downs her glass. She’ll nurse the next one.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng Translations, in order of appearance:
> 
> "Sha, Heda.": Yes, Commander  
> "Gon yu we.": Leave/go  
> "Shof op.": Shut up  
> "Ai sonraun laik yu sonraun, en oso gonpley nou ste oden nowe.": My soul is your soul and our fight is never over"  
> "Oso gonpley ste oden nowe!": Our fight is never over!  
> "Chilla": Relax  
> "Nou get yu daun, Heda": Don't worry, Commander  
> "Heda": Commander

**Author's Note:**

> Trigedasleng Translations, in order of appearance:
> 
> "Heda": Commander  
> "Shof op, Gustus.": Shut up, Gustus   
> "Sha, Heda": Yes, Commander


End file.
